Lyft to Develop Self-Driving Car Technology in New Silicon Valley Facility<br />“That’s why 10 percent of our engineers are already focused on developing self-driving technology —<br />and we’ll continue to grow that team in the months ahead.”<br />Uber, Lyft’s much larger rival, has spent millions opening facilities in Pittsburgh, Toronto<br />and San Francisco dedicated entirely to autonomous-vehicle research, while building its own hardware and software systems to operate the vehicles.<br />“We want to bring the whole industry together with this,<br />and we think there’s a unique opportunity in time right now for Lyft to become a leader while doing it,” said Raj Kapoor, Lyft’s chief strategy officer, in a press event at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.<br />While Uber’s self-driving plans have mostly been a solo effort, Lyft has announced what it calls its Open Platform Initiative,<br />a way to develop autonomous vehicle technology in conjunction with automakers and technology companies.<br />On Friday, Lyft, the ride-hailing company, announced<br />that it was developing its own self-driving technology, marking yet another company’s gamble that the future of transportation will be marked by self-driving cars.<br />Lyft is marking the occasion with the opening of a new self-driving-research facility in Palo Alto, Calif.,<br />and plans to heavily recruit new engineering and technical people for the facility after it opens in the coming weeks.<br />Now, technology companies are betting that the next 10 years and beyond will be spent battling for control of the self-driving automobile.
